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NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY TELL YOU about an exception.
THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
Picture the scene: an assistant principal, a man already a living legend throughout the school
district, a man with a voice of command like Ozymandias, dispatching young Gatto (who only
yesterday wrote the immortal line "Legs are in the limelight this year" for a hosiery ad) into the
dark tunnels of the Death School with these words:
Not a letter, not a numeral, not a punctuation mark from those keys or you will
never be hired here again. Go now.
When I asked what I should do instead with the class of seventy-five, he replied, "Fall back on
your resources. Remember, you have no typing license!"
Off I went up the dark stairs, down the dark corridor. Opening the door I discovered my dark
class in place, an insane din coming from seventy-five old black Underwoods, Royals, Smith
Coronas: CLACKA! CLACKA! CLACKA! CLICK! CLICK! CLACK! DING! SLAM! CLACK!
Seven hundred and fifty black fingers dancing around under the typewriter covers. One-hundred
and fifty hammering hands clacking louder by far than I could bellow: STOP....TYPING! NO
TYPING ALLOWED! DON’T TYPE! STOP! STOP! STOP I SAY! PUT THOSE COVERS
ON THE MACHINES!
The last words were intended for the most flagrant of the young stenographers who had
abandoned any pretense of compliance. By unmasking their instruments they were declaring war.
In self-defense, I escalated my shouting into threats and insults, the standard tactical remedy of
teachers in the face of impending chaos, kicked a few chairs, banged an aluminum water pitcher
out of shape, and was having some success curtailing rogue typers when an ominous chant of
OOOOOHHHHHH! OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH! warned me some other game was now afoot.
Sure enough, a skinny little fellow had arisen in the back of the room and was bearing down on
me, chair held high over his head. He had heard enough of my deranged screed, just as Middlesex
farmers had enough of British lip and raised their chairs at Concord and Lexington. I too raised a
chair and was backing my smaller opponent down when all of a sudden I caught a vision of both
of us as a movie camera might. It caused me to grin and when I did the whole class laughed and
tensions subsided.
"Isn’t this a typing period?" I said, "WHY DON’T YOU START TYPING?" Day One of my
thirty-year teaching career concluded quietly with a few more classes to which I said at once, "No
goofing off! Let’s TYPE!" And they did. All the machines survived unscathed.
I had never thought much about kids up to that moment, even fancied I didn’t like them, but these
bouts of substitute teaching raised the possibility I was reacting adversely not to youth but to
invisible societal directives ordering young people to act childish whether they want to or not.
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